


One Good Turn Deserves Another

by futuresoon



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: F/F, Genderswap, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuresoon/pseuds/futuresoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yulia Petrov thinks about Wild Tigress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Good Turn Deserves Another

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_eyesgirl_fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_eyesgirl_fic/gifts).



It wasn't that she didn't know why she was doing this.

As she stared through the roaring, blue-green flames, at the faces of the heroes, she knew, she absolutely knew, why she felt that tiny spark of relief when she heard Wild Tigress start to run away. And she knew why she was only blocking the other heroes rather than attacking them. She knew why, ultimately, she ran away herself, rocketing up past the rooftops and away from their sight. Of course she knew.

But she didn't have to be happy about it.

Yulia Petrov was not a woman given to flights of fancy. Her sudden wish to aid a falsely-accused hero was not out of affection of any sort. She wouldn't even have bothered, but--knowing there was a hero who still believed that heroes were supposed to do good, and seeing that Hero TV was trying to ruin her...it rang too harshly in Yulia's mind. Hero TV was a poison, twisting justice into entertainment, caring little about its actual effect on the city. And it was trying to kill someone who did not deserve to die.

And there was the fake Wild Tigress in the black suit, too, the one they told the city was the _real_ hero, was their perfectly-produced savior. Yulia remembered how Hero TV had told the city her mother was such a flawless hero. Yulia knew, better than anyone, how Hero TV twisted its crimes into perceived victories. A woman might be caught and killed for a crime she didn't commit, and the crowd goes wild. A woman was crushed into a wreck of her former self, and she was buried with honors for acts of heroism she was unable to achieve herself. The same story, written in different ways. Of course Yulia knew why she had to stop it from happening again.

(And seeing tapes, recordings that to a careful eye show a glow vanishing a few seconds too early--no. She would never let that become what happened so many years ago.)

So Yulia did what she could. Perhaps an extra few minutes would turn out to be what Tigress needed to gain her own strategy.

She would have done more, she would have, but--it was hard enough to do just that, and she didn't know if she could stomach giving further aid. A falsely-accused hero was still a hero. Even if Tigress had done some good in the past, she had done it in a mockery of justice. (Though if she hadn't known--well, she _should_ have known, she should have seen the signs that something was wrong.) She deserved some help, but not more than that.

So Yulia waited and watched and listened and tried to quell the emotions that were rising up inside of her. Knowing was not the same as accepting.

She did not _accept_ that fury when from a distance she saw the famous, perfect, _marketable_ Barbara Brooks Jr nearly beat Tigress to death on the bridge. And she didn't accept that strange frisson of--something, when she saw the two of them leave the bridge together as if nothing had happened.

(But she remembered her father insisting that the bruises were nothing, it wasn't her mother's fault, he could handle it.)

The next time she saw Wild Tigress, she didn't know what to feel at all. Torso nearly burned to a crisp, wobbling on her legs and holding onto Barbara with one arm and a little boy in the other--a little boy Yulia didn't recognize. Had he somehow been involved in the fight? A bystander caught in the action, only alive because (of course) Tigress saved him? But that didn't make sense, there was no reason for a normal citizen to be in the tower. So Yulia thought back to what she knew, that Tigress was a Tetsuko T. Kaburagi who had only recently returned to Sternbild from some time off, that she lived in an apartment that looked too big for just one person, and there it was. Later, a look at the recording of the heroes on the rooftop only gave her further confirmation. A son. When she first thought of it, an ice-cold chill shot down her spine. _Not again, no--_ but the boy had clung to his mother like she was the only person who mattered, and if Tigress had kept him away from her dangerous, toxic job, then it _wasn't,_ was it. Not every parallel was perfect.

A retirement announcement. The audience's reaction to the loss of Wild Tigress was not nearly as strong as their reaction to the loss of Barbara Brooks Jr. Yulia's bitterness was tempered, though, when she saw perfect beautiful Barbara's face slip into weariness the moment she left the podium. Maybe she hadn't enjoyed the fame, after all. Maybe retirement would change her into someone less offensive to the name of justice.

Retirement _with Tigress,_ though. Yulia could just barely admit to herself that Tigress was the closest thing to an actual hero Hero TV had. And now she was leaving. Yulia wouldn't even see her for the near-weekly damage hearings any more. The escape would be the last time they met.

Yulia did what she always did when the world didn't sit right in her head. And this time, the charred corpse in the van was the most satisfying result she'd had in years. Revenge for everything Hero TV had ever done, to her family and to every victim in a staged crime and to a city convinced there was nothing wrong--and to a woman who'd nearly died, just because she was too good to ignore a friend's misery...

But that wasn't important. Tigress and Barbara left. The new leaders of Hero TV seemed less actively villainous. Yulia had other things to think about.

(She very definitely didn't think about sending an inquiry to the law department in Oriental Town to see if any major property damage was starting to occur there.)

One year. Nothing of any great importance happened. Yulia had almost buried that spark of interest underneath twelve months of telling herself it was an unproductive thought.

She was almost one hundred percent certain Wild Tigress' return wasn't done just to piss her off. Almost.

So many questions she would never be able to ask-- _what did your son think, was this somehow Barbara's idea, were you unhappy, are you so foolishly good that you don't mind being a laughingstock--_ but. She could watch the show without a constant sense of revulsion, now.

(Even if seeing Tigress stay so close to Barbara left a strange feeling in her stomach.)

And the one thing she could definitely say--

"Evidently your time away did not improve your subconscious desire to destroy every object in your path, Ms. Tigress," Yulia said, arching an eyebrow while she examined the newest set of damage reports. In front of her, Tigress squirmed.

"Uh, well, I am kinda out of practice, I guess..."

"As the ceiling of the Hermes Motors showroom has discovered," Yulia said. "Tell me, did you feel the need to make up for all the damage you could have been committing this past year?"

As Tigress stammered out excuses, Yulia leaned back in her chair and let the familiar words flow through her. It was comforting, in its own way. A reminder that she had the chance to watch someone try to be the kind of person she had once thought heroes could be.

And if the past was any indication, she would be face-to-face with Tigress on a near-regular basis from now on.

She knew why that was important.

Perhaps she didn't have to be unhappy about it after all.


End file.
